The Amazon listing for the recent board game Moon Colony Bloodbath is looking pretty strange. It promotes the product with four product photos, each of which shows completely different components for the game. More importantly, none of these components actually appear in Moon Colony Bloodbath. I should know: I reviewed the dang game.
Moon Colony Bloodbath is a deck-building, deck-destroying game where players build moon colonies and try to survive as killer robots run things into the ground. It's a snappy, silly card game that - crucially - doesn't have a main board. Or miniatures. Or hex tiles. You know, all the things we can see in Amazon's product photos.
Despite being on the publisher's official storefront, Amazon's images are clearly fake, and board game fans have already begun speculating that they're AI-generated. All we know for certain right now is that these product photos have nothing to do with Moon Colony Bloodbath or the people who made it. Designer Donald X. Vaccarino says in a BoardGameGeek thread from April 10 that "it's not a leak, not an old prototype, and doesn't come from me or RGG [Rio Grande Games] in any way".
Wargamer has asked Amazon to confirm whether the images are AI generated, where they were sourced from, and why they are included on the Moon Colony Bloodbath product page. Wargamer has also asked Rio Grande Games for further comment on the situation. I will update this story when I receive replies.
It's a shame to see Moon Colony Bloodbath misrepresented on storefronts, as it was one of the best board games I tested last year. Plus, if those images are AI-generated, it's hugely ironic. Moon Colony Bloodbath has a deeply satirical theme that seems to be poking fun on our increasing over-reliance on (and billionaire investment in) tech. The robots may not turn murderous just yet, but they might be meddling with our precious board games.
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